Same here. But as many have commented. So much more $$$ in the USA. Canada needs to get on this and host and same for Mexico.
I think CONCACAF can still enjoy the financial benefits of playing most matches in the US while still getting other countries involved. The knockout rounds could still be played exclusively in the US, but what if in the group stages the teams in each group were ranked 1 to 4 and the higher seeded country hosted every game? That way you wouldn't have to worry about there being a match played in an uninterested country. There would always be a "home team" for fans to root for. Here's how it would work for this year: Group A: 1. USA 2. Honduras 3. Panama 4. Haiti US plays all three in the US. Honduras plays Panama and Haiti in Honduras. Panama plays Haiti in Panama. Group B: 1. Costa Rica 2. Jamaica 3. Canada 4. El Salvador Costa Rica plays all three in Costa Rica. Jamaica plays El Salvador and Canada in Jamaica. Canada plays El Salvador in Canada. Group C: 1. Mexico 2. Trinidad and Tobago 3. Guatemala 4. Cuba Mexico plays all three in Mexico (probably at the Azteca). Trinidad plays Guatemala and Cuba in Trinidad. Guatemala plays Cuba in Guatemala. I think this would be an excellent compromise. All of the knockout rounds would still be played in the US, Mexican fans would get three games at the Azteca to look forward to, and weaker teams would still get a chance to hold a competitive match in front of their home fans.
The Mexican Group would probably have to be in Monterrey or some other Stadium. The Azteca would be way too empty for those opponents. Another problem would be the travel. As it is the federations complain about the travel from venues within the United States. Could you imagine teams not knowing where their flight is going to be on the last match day? They could either be flying all the way to the United states thousands of miles away (not really knowing which venue they may have to play in until the final whistle) or back home thousands of miles away. Makes things a bit complicated logistically.
Yeah if you were going to get that much travel, you'd probably have to extend the tournament and it'd be way too long
That just doesn't make any logistical sense. It is already bad enough to ask teams to fly from Houston to Boston in between games, but now you are talking about flying to Guatemala and whatnot as well... no thanks. It could be like the Caribbean Cup, where one team hosts each group. The games are all double headers anyways, so I think it would be fine to have Jamaica vs Canada in Costa Rica as the first game of the night. Sure, some people will wait and come to the headliner: Costa Rica vs El Salvador, but the tickets are for both games, so you'd still have the sellout whether or not people actually attend the other game. But I think a decent amount of people would go to the other game too - I mean, it is included in the price of the ticket, why not go?
I agree with ZeekLTK about the travel. Tournaments seed teams, but what soccer tournaments (for national teams, excluding something like the MLS playoffs) reward the best teams with more home games? Even if the Gold Cup remains almost entirely in the USA, I could see making each group stay in a smaller geographic area. For example, there could be 6 regions. In each Gold Cup, 3 regions would each host one group, 2 other regions would host 2 Quarterfinals each, 1 other region would host the Semifinals, and 1 lucky region would get the Final and Third Place game in addition to something else. The regions could alternate so each region got a group half the time and knockout round games half the game. The regions could be numbered, and a die could be rolled to determine which one got the Final and Third Place game. If a region got a group, three stadiums would be selected, and one stadium would be chose if a region got the Quarterfinals or Semifinals. Here are regions along with MLS clubs in them (I wrote the club, not the stadium name) and possible other stadiums in the area (such as those used for WCQs or Gold Cup games) that could host: 1. Northeast: Toronto Montreal NYCFC New York Red Bulls Philadelphia New England MetLife Stadium (New Jersey) Lincoln Financial Field (Pennsylvania) Rentschler Field (Connecticut) 2. Southeast M&T Bank Stadium (Maryland) D.C. United Orlando City Raymond James Staidum (Florida) Bank of America Stadium (North Carolina) Georgia Dome (Georgia) LP Field (Tennessee) I know Maryland and D.C. may belong in the Northeast region, but I wanted to balance how many stadiums each venue had. 3. Midwest Chicago Columbus Sporting Kansas City 4. Central Colorado Rapids FC Dallas Houston 5. Northwest Seattle Vancouver Portland Real Salt Lake 6. Southwest San Jose Los Angeles University of Phoenix Stadium (Arizona) This is not meant to list every possible stadium, just many of them including every MLS stadium. With this format, people in Montana and Hawaii would remain out of luck, but many people in the USA would be able to drive to a stadium that hosted a Gold Cup game at least once every four years. If the USA wins Group A and advances to the Final of Gold Cup 2015, they will have flown from Texas to Massachusetts to Kansas to Maryland to Georgia to Pennsylvania. Maryland and Pennsylvania are nearby, but that doesn't help with the Semifinals in Georgia in between.
I would love to have the Gold Cup on a rotating basis but it just ain't going to happen. Two numbers: CONCACAF income 1989 (pre Gold Cup) $140,000 CONCACAF income 2012 $38,000,000 Another two numbers: Mexico friendlies in Mexico (2011-2014): 8 games Mexico friendlies in the US (2011-2014): 24 games There's just no way CONCACAF will ever give up all that money. Heck, not even the FMF wants to give up the money.
Involving more countries could be made like this (Caribbean Cup scheme): three groups in three countries, like Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, knock-out stage in one country - US, of course.
I've said it for awhile that the Gold Cup should be rotated between all three regions of CONCACAF (North America; Central America; Caribbean). I've always assumed that television deals and sponsorships are where most of the money comes from, not attendance. Does anyone really think that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is going to be making significantly less than it would if it was in the U.S.? And if CONCACAF was run by people who cared about soccer there are plenty of sponsorship and television deals out there. The problem is that it takes work and these people are lazy and corrupt. I just assume they keep having it in the U.S. because it's the easy way out and they probably do receive some kickbacks. It takes a lot of work to get associations to co-host which would probably be needed in Central America and the Caribbean. But if a Cricket World Cup can be held in the Caribbean and it was profitable, I don't buy any excuse that a Gold Cup can't be held in the Caribbean. Besides soccer, even tourism would receive a boost in that region. Even Central America could use any excuse for some tourism. Problem is is that people like Jack Warner are in charge of these federations. He should've never been the face of T&T soccer; someone like Dwight Yorke should be. And what the heck was Chuck Blazer doing as the face of U.S. Soccer? How about someone nominating someone who played on the U.S. team such as Alexi Lalas, Tab Ramos, etc? The tournament has become stale and it's too predictable. I actually prefer watching the qualification tournaments more than the competition itself. The competition has only ever been in North America and only the three North American teams have won it. The draw is also set up so that Mexico and the U.S. don't meet until the final as long as they win their groups. That means that a team would have to most likely beat both Mexico and the U.S. to win. So basically my answer to the original question is that it will never happen. CONCACAF and every national federation within it would need to be run by competent, ex-professional players from each country.
I cant believe people still talk about this. Other than Canada and Mexico, no other country can do it. The stadiums in the other countries suck and CONCACAF wont make the money. It's that simple.
that's not true Costa Rica hosted a u17 Women's World Cup. They have enough FIFA approved stadiums to host this event. Panama could co host with either Honduras or Guatemala. TV money is where most of the money is so this event can be profitable elsewhere. However as we have seen CONCACAF is filled with FA presidents that don't care about sporting balance or growing the sport just about their bank accounts it is as simple as that
What's the most stadiums that hold at least 20,000 in any one UNCAF country? What's the most stadiums that hold at least 10,000 in any one UNCAF country? How many stadiums in Costa Rica were used in the U-17 Women's World Cup? How many people in any one UNCAF country would go to a USA-Mexico Final?
The point is not to make it all about in stadium attendance. Clearly the USA can outdraw anyone in the world in that department. The 94 World Cup is still the most profitable in history. Yet everyone would laugh at anyone using that as an argument for having the World Cup in the USA all the time. Yes the World Cup is way more profitable than the gold cup could ever be but the gold cup can be profitable enough outside the USA. Hosting it elsewhere would mean a USA Mexico final wouldn't be a lock. The USA record in Costa Rica is terrible and the last loss couldn't be blamed on the stadium. Even Mexico struggles in Central America
These are absolutely the wrong questions to ask if you care about having a fair tournament with a level playing field, as opposed to a shameless and lazy money grab doing everything possible to have the preordained final game. But even if money was the first and most important thing to be considered (way above sportsmanship, fairness, having a modicum of respectability as a confederation, etc, etc, etc), the "not enough ginormous stadiums " argument does not hold a lot of water, since as it has been shown before, the bulk of the earnings from the Gold Cup comes from TV deals and sponsorships, not ticket sales. And the "empty stands" argument does not fare much better either - the Gold Cup in the US gets around that problem by scheduling double headers, where the first game draws close to nobody but people show up to watch the second game of the evening. This can be done anywhere, if the organization wants to. But even if it isn't done, and there are a few (or a lot, who cares) empty seats in the stands for a few (or a lot, again who cares) of the games, that is not a powerful enough reason to not move the tournament around like everybody else in the world does. Heck, there have been a few first round Copa America games played with tons of empty seats (Uruguay/Jamaica had 8K people in a 21K stadium, Ecuador/Bolivia had 6K people in a 20K stadium, Mexico/Bolivia had 14K people in a 22K stadium, etc, etc, etc). So if CONMEBOL can deal with less than packed stadiums, why can't CONCACAF?
Exactly. And, if not for any other reason, it would be nice to see this continental tournament held in some other country, it's annoying to see it being played in same country over and over again.
Conmebol only has 10 mouths to feed, concacaf has 31. So, the total amount of profit needs to triple that of Conmebol in order to be on par with their per team payout.
LOL, so according to you the Gold Cup brings in three times the amount of money than Copa America does? And not only that, but apparently a huge chunk of that money comes from ticket sales? Hilarious.
That is not what i said at all. Simply stating that the Gold Cup pot is divided 31 ways while The Copa America pot 10 ways. So, the Gold Cup needs three times the overall profit of the Copa America if both competitions wanted to have the same per team payout. That puts a lot of pressure on Gold Cup organizers to maximize profit if it wants to be seen in the same light as the Copa America in terms of profitability as teams like Mexico will certainly compare the profitability of the 2 tournaments
I wasn't paying attention to the low Copa America attendance, and I acknowledge that if my attendance argument was applied to CONMEBOL, Uruguay would never get to host the Copa America because of its small population compared to Brazil and Argentina. Therefore I won't say that the Gold Cup should always be in the USA. I looked it up and the smallest stadium used in the U-17 Women's World Cup in Costa Rica had a capacity of 4,300 in Liberia. If I ran CONCACAF, I would consider letting Costa Rica host the Gold Cup if all the knockout round games were played at stadiums with a capacity of 16,625 (how much the Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto holds) or greater and if the Final would fill the 34,453 capacity at Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica. The knockout rounds could use those two stadiums and Estadio Ricardo Saprissa. I don't know what the biggest stadium in Costa Rica not used in the U-17 Women's World Cup is.
Focusing on profit over sportsmanship is the wrong approach. I would say that the goal should be to be seen in the same light as Copa America in terms of respectability rather than profitability. Regarding Mexico comparing dollar signs to see which one they prefer, they do not have a choice. They are forced to participate in the Gold Cup as it is the main competition from the confederation they belong to. I suppose they could send a weak team if they choose to, but they have to send one. Plus there is no guarantee they will always be invited to participate in Copa America.
The Gold cup is not paying out anywhere close to what Copa America pays its federations now by hosting it in the US all the time. So that argument holds no weight. Mexico could easily decide to send their A team to the Copa but then they risk missing out on the confederations cup which they seem to prioritize based on how Piojo selected the squads for both tournaments
While i agree with you in theory, real world implications get in the way. My university UNCW had to play its conference tournament to qualify for the ncaa basketball tournament in Richmond Virginia, a city in which two fellow conference members were located. In terms of sportsmanship it was not fair. But the real world dictated that it be played there because it was in Richmond the conference would get the highest attendence and the best deal for collisium rent. This tournament is still growing. It was not that long ago that English language tv coverage was not available. As something is growing it needs to be nurtured, particularly when what is growing finances the entire confederation. Having it in the USA allows the tournament to grow and become stronger so that one day it can be held outside of the USA. 2013 was a great year for this tournament as it was hugely successful without a Mexico US final. 2015 saw teams send their best to qualify for this tournament. Give it time, one day concacaf will be able to hold this outside the USA.
I disagree 100%. The goal of the regional tournament is to determine the best team in the region, period. Running it always in the same country introduces a huge bias. And, as it has been mentioned several times now, the bulk of the money comes from TV deals and sponsors, which have little to nothing to do with the attendance numbers. Incidentally, the GC has existed for almost 30 years now, why should it be treated like delicate newborn is beyond me.